The invention relates to a continuous casting machine, particularly to a billet or bloom caster, with a mold to be inserted in a frame-type mold table and a strand guide connected downstream of the mold and comprised of several strand guide segments carrying strand guide rollers and with a mold oscillator supporting and moving the mold table.
Continuous casting machines generally serve to cast strands of different cross-sectional dimensions within a minimum restranding time and requiring a minimum number of spare parts. Large-section strands are cast with adjustable plate molds, whereas for strands with billet cross sections and partly for strands with bloom cross sections tubular molds are used which are exchanged upon section change. Exchanging the mold alone is not sufficient since there is still a liquid zone inside the strand and the hot strand shell, still being thin and easily deformable, must be supported without misalignment particularly after exiting the mold, so the strand guide segment connected downstream must also be exchanged.
A continuous casting machine of this type is already known from DE-A 19 57 689, where the mold, the mold table carrying the mold, the mold oscillator and a first strand guide segment are located within a detachable three-dimensional frame. This frame can be lifted and exchanged together with all its enclosures. At the same time the next strand guide segment located beneath is also accessible and exchangeable. According to the specifically described embodiment, the mold with the mold table and the first strand guide segment are separately located in the three-dimensional frame. This arrangement does not provide for automatic adjustment of the components to one another. Especially the alignment of the plane formed by the shaping inside wall of the mold and the generatrix (strand surface) to be put against the rollers of the first strand guide segment is highly important due to thin strand shell and requires exact and laborious adjustment.
A continuous casting machine is known from AT-PS 347 057, where a mold and the foot roller stand attached to the mold on the exit side and a bending zone connected downstream of the foot roller stand can be jointly dismantled from the continuous casting machine through a supporting frame comprising the mold and the bending zone.
This conception requires repeated adjustment of the individual components to one another. One the one hand, the wall of the mold cavity must be adjusted to the generatrix of the downstream foot rollers and these foot rollers must be adjusted to the strand guide rollers of the subsequent bending zone using an appropriate measuring ruler. On the other hand, how to adjust other components located in the mold area, such as the mold stirrer or the mold level measuring system, remains unclear.